Chat GPT: First Musings

Howard Gardner © 2023

How will ChatGPT—and other Large Language Instruments—affect our educational system—and our broader society? How should they?

I’m frequently asked questions like these—and they are much on my mind.

Something akin to ChatGPT—human or super-human levels of performance—has long been portrayed in science fiction: I’m familiar with the American, British, French, and Russian varieties. But few observers expected such excellent performance so fast, so impressively, so threatening (or enabling)—depending on your stance.

As suggested by historian Yuval Harari, we may be approaching the end of the Anthropocene era.

We can anticipate that large language instruments—like Open AI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E—will continually improve.

They will be able to do anything that can be described, captured in some kind of notation. Already they are able to conduct psychotherapy with patients, write credible college application essays, and create works of visual art or pieces of music in the style of well-known human creators as well as in newly invented styles. Soon one of their creations may be considered for the Nobel Prize in physics or literature, the Pulitzer Prize for musical composition or journalism.

Of course, superior AI performance does not—and need not—prevent human beings from engaging in such activities. We humans can still paint, compose music, sculpt, compete in chess, conduct psychotherapy sessions—even if AI systems turn out to outperform us in some or most ways.

Open AI introduced ChatGPT 3 in 2020 and DALL-E in 2021

We can also work in conjunction with AI programs. A painter may ask DALL-E to create something, after which the painter may alter what the program has furnished. A researcher may present ChatGPT with a hypothesis and ask the system to come up with ways to test that hypothesis—after which the researcher can carry out one or more of these approaches herself. Such activities can alternate, going back and forth between the human provision and the computational program.

We fear what could go wrong—and rightly so. AI systems like ChatGPT have not undergone a million-plus years of evolutionary history (including near extinction or sudden vaults in skill); such recently devised systems do not inhabit our planet in the same way that the hominid species has. They are not necessarily—and certainly not existentially—afraid of cataclysmic climate change, or nuclear war, or viruses that prove fatal to homo sapiens. Indeed, such systems could spread misinformation rapidly and thereby contribute to destructive climate change and the probability of nuclear war (recall “The Doomsday Machine” featured in the dystopic movie Dr. Strangelove). These destructive outcomes are certainly possible, although (admittedly) such calamities might happen even had there been no digital revolution.

And what about the effects of Large Language Instruments on our schools, our broader educational system?

Many fear that systems like ChatGPT will make it unnecessary for students to learn anything, since ChatGPT can tell them everything they might want or need to know—almost instantaneously and almost always accurately (or at least as accurately as an 20th century encyclopedia or today’s “edition” of Wikipedia!). I think that AI will have a huge impact on education, but not in that way.

Now that machines are rivalling or even surpassing us in so many ways, I have an ambitious and perhaps radical recommendation. What education of members of our species should do—increasingly and thoughtfully—is to focus on the human condition: what it means to be human, what our strengths and frailties are, what we have accomplished (for good or evil) over many centuries of biological and cultural evolution, what opportunities are afforded by our stature and our status, what we should avoid, what we should pursue, in what ways, and with what indices of success...or of concern.

But to forestall an immediate and appropriate reservation: I don’t intend to be homo sapiens centric. Rather, I want us to focus on our species as part of the wider world, indeed the wider universe. That universe includes the biological and geological worlds that are known to us.

Bruner in the Chanticleer 1936, Duke University (Source: Wikipedia)

Psychologist-turned-educator (and my teacher) Jerome Bruner inspired me. His curriculum for middle school children, developed nearly sixty years ago, centered on three questions:

• What makes human beings human?

• How did they get to be that way?

• How can they be made more so?

To approach these framing topics intelligently, we need disciplinary knowledge, rigor, and tools. We may not need to completely scuttle earlier curricular frameworks (e.g., those posed in the United States in the 1890s by the “Committee of Ten” or the more recent “Common Core”); but we need to rethink how they can be taught, modelled, and activated to address such over-arching questions.

We need to understand our human nature—biologically, psychologically, culturally, historically, and pre-historically. That’s the way to preserve the planet, all of us on it. It’s also the optimal way to launch joint human-computational ventures—ranging from robots that construct or re-construct environments to programs dedicated (as examples) to economic planning, political positioning, military strategies and decisions.

To emphasize: this approach is not intended to glorify; homo sapiens has done much that is regrettable, and lamentable. Rather, it is to explain and to understand —so that, as a species, we can do better as we move forward in a human-computer era.

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Against this background, how have I re-considered or re-conceptualized the three issues that, as a scholar, I’ve long pondered?

1. Synthesizing is the most straightforward. Anything that can be laid out and formulated—by humans or machines—will be synthesized well by ChatGPT and its ilk. It’s hard to imagine that a human being—or even a large team of well-educated human beings—will do better synthesis than ChatGPT4, 5, or n.

   We could imagine a “Howard Gardner ChatGPT”—one that synthesizes the way that I do, only better—it would be like an ever-improving chess program in that way. Whether ChatGPT-HG is a dream or a nightmare I leave to your (human) judgment.

2. Good work and good citizenship pose different challenges. Our aspirational conceptions of work and of membership in a community have emerged in the course of human history over the last several thousand years—within and across hundreds of cultures. Looking ahead, these aspirations indicate what we are likely to have to do if we want to survive as a planet and as a species.

   All cultures have views, conceptions, of these “goods,” but of course—and understandably, these views are not the same. What is good—and what is bad, or evil, or neutral—in 2023 is not the same as in 1723. What is valued today in China is not necessarily what is admired in Scandinavia or Brazil. And there are different versions of “the good” in the US—just think of the deep south compared to the East and West coasts.

   ChatGPT could synthesize different senses of “good,” in the realms of both “work” and “citizenship.” But there’s little reason to think that human beings will necessarily abide by such syntheses—the League of Nations, the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva convention were certainly created with good will by human beings—but they have been honored as much in the breach as in the observance.

A Personal Perspective

We won’t survive as a planet unless we institute and subscribe to some kind of world belief system. It needs the prevalence of Christianity in the Occident a millennium ago, or of Confucianism or Buddhism over the centuries in Asia, and it should incorporate tactics like “peaceful disobedience” in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela. This form of faith needs to be constructed so as to enable the survival and thriving of the planet, and the entities on it, including plants, non-human animals, and the range of chemical elements and compounds.

Personally, I do not have reservations about terming this a “world religion”—so long as it does not posit a specific view of an Almighty Figure—and require allegiance to that entity. But a better analogy might be a “world language”—one that could be like Esperanto or a string of bits 00010101111….

And if such a school of thought is akin to a religion, it can’t be one that favors one culture over others—it needs to be catholic, rather than Catholic, judicious rather than Jewish. Such a belief-and-action system needs to center on the recognition and the resolution of challenges—in the spirit of controlling climate change, or conquering illness, or combatting a comet directed at earth from outer space, or a variety of ChatGPT that threatens to “do us in” from within….Of the philosophical or epistemological choices known to me, I resonate most to humanism—as described well by Sarah Bakewell in her recent book Humanly Possible.

Multiple Intelligences (MI)

And, finally, I turn to MI. Without question, any work by any intelligence, or combination of intelligences, that can be specified with clarity will soon be mastered by Large Language Instruments—indeed, such performances by now constitute a trivial achievement with respect to linguistic, logical, musical, spatial intelligences—at least as we know them, via their human instantiations.

How—or even whether —such computational instruments can display bodily intelligences or the personal intelligences is a different matter. The answer depends on how broad a formulation one is willing to accept.

To be specific:

Taylor Swift at 2019 American Music Awards (Source: Wikipedia)

• Does a robotic version of ChatGPT need to be able to perform ballet à la Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn? And must it also show how these performers might dance in 2023 rather than in 1963?

• Does it need to inspire people, the way Joan of Arc or Martin Luther King did?

• Should it be able to conduct successful psychotherapy in the manner of Erik Erikson or Carl Rogers ?

• Or are non-human attempts to instantiate these intelligences seen as category errors— the way that we would likely dismiss a chimpanzee that purported to create poetry on a keyboard?

The answers, in turn, are determined by what we mean by a human intelligence—is it certain behavioral outputs alone (the proverbial monkey that types out Shakespeare, or the songbird that can emulate Maria Callas or Luciano Pavarotti, Mick Jagger or Taylor Swift)? Or is it what a human or group of humans can express through that intelligence to other human beings—the meanings that can be created. conveyed, comprehended among members of the species.

I’m reminded of Thomas Nagel’s question: “What is it like to be a bat?” ChatGPT can certainly simulate human beings. But perhaps only human beings can realize—feel, experience, dream—what it’s like to be a human being. And perhaps only human beings can and will care—existentially—about that question. And this is what I believe education in our post-ChatGPT world should focus on.

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For comments on earlier versions of this far-ranging blog, I am grateful to Shinri Furuzawa, Jay Gardner, Annie Stachura, and Ellen Winner.

References:

Bakewell, S. (2024). Humanly possible: Seven hundred years of humanist freethinking, inquiry, and hope. Vintage Canada.

Nagel, T. (1974). what is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674594623.c15

Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, August 21). Man: A course of study. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man:_A_Course_of_Study

A Museum Inspired by Multiple Intelligences Theory

The Connecticut Children’s Museum located in New Haven, Connecticut, USA is an interactive museum aimed at children ages 3-9. All exhibits are inspired by the theory of multiple intelligences and include an observation bee hive, a post office, and a “Great Green Room” from the popular children’s book Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown.

Musical Intelligence Room

The eight permanent exhibits are themed around each different intelligence: Musical, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Logical-Mathematical, Linguistic, Spatial, and Naturalist. The museum also provides books in each room for visitors to look at which enrich each exhibit in a variety of textures and languages.

The museum building also houses the Creating Kids Child Care Center and the Early Childhood Resource Center. Creating Kids offers a program with a project-based curriculum inspired by MI theory. The children spend their day with a small group in a stimulating environment designed for learning and celebrating different intelligences. More information on the museum can be found at their website.

We would like to thank Annick Winokur for bringing this museum to our attention.

Common Misrepresentations of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI)

BY ANNIE STACHURA

Since its conception in the early 1980s, Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI) has been reviewed and cited in countless ways. Discussions of its uses and applications have evolved over time, taken on new shades and shapes, across the educational landscape. As with any similarly expansive theory, misrepresentations can gain traction and persist, and these misunderstandings can in turn lead to malpractices.

In an effort to encourage representations and uses of MI that are grounded in a reasonable understanding of the theory, Gardner has outlined both “good practices” and “malpractices.” This concern about accuracy is increasingly crucial in our times, where it is all too easy to find and spread misinformation — sometimes inadvertently, sometimes deliberately. Especially on the internet, reiterations are not always fact-checked. The answers we’re looking for may sometimes be at our literal fingertips and at other times, buried somewhere, difficult to distinguish or verify.

Methods to understanding accurate/inaccurate representations of mi

I wanted to unpack some of the misunderstandings and misrepresentations that commonly appear in MI-related discourse. I was interested not only in how the theory was being reiterated and used, but the frequency with which these misinterpretations have come up in recent years. Accordingly, I collected a sample of 241 papers and articles published online between the years 2018 and 2023 — all of which mentioned Howard’s research.

First, a tiny refresher. The Theory of Multiple Intelligences suggests (based on evidence from disparate sources) that human beings have not one, but a number of relatively discrete intellectual capacities. Gardner’s theory is a critique of the standard psychological view of intellect: the idea that there is a single intelligence that can be adequately measured by IQ or other short answer tests. There are no direct educational implications of the theory, but some recommendations make sense, while others are misleading, or even false.

I found that of the sample of articles collected that mentioned Gardner’s research, 72% (or 173 articles) mentioned MI. I divided those that mentioned MI into three categories:

Category 1: Mentions MI, but does not define it

Category 2: Mentions MI, and accurately defines/uses it

Category 3: Mentions MI, and inaccurately defines/uses it

FINDINGS

After sorting through these papers, I made the initial categorical breakdown out of the total (173).

While I was curious to understand the proportion of these papers that provided or did not provide a definition, I thought it might be advantageous to know how the numbers change when only taking into consideration the papers that both mention and define MI. If one solely looks at Categories 2 and 3, here is what the percentages look like:

Adjusting the data this way, it becomes more obvious that while a majority of the discourse around multiple intelligences defines and uses the theory in a reasonably accurate way, inaccuracies and misrepresentations still make up a sizable portion of the conversation.

I wanted to understand more about these misrepresentations and to determine from which fundamental misunderstandings about multiple intelligences they arise. Accordingly, I focused on the papers from Category 3 (“Mentions MI, and inaccurately defines/uses it”) and worked to create descriptive buckets, to categorize these misconceptions and determine how often they appear in the discourse. Below, I’ve outlined these descriptive buckets from most frequently presented misconception to least, and provided some examples from the data.

Error #1: Equating multiple intelligences with “learning styles” (38%)

MI theory is often confused with and/or conflated with learning styles. The term “learning styles” refers to a handful of theories that aim to account for differences in individuals’ learning. Readers may have encountered before the idea of one student being a visual learner while another learns best by listening. While both learning styles and MI theory have possible educational implications, the implications are not the same; a “style” describes an approach that can putatively be used for a range of activities, but intelligence refers to the computational power of a mental system. For example, if someone has strong linguistic intelligence, that person can readily compute information that involves language or convert other material into linguistic form. Gardner himself is skeptical about the utility — and even the validity — of the concept of learning styles. As an example, people with weakness in reading are often called visual learners, and yet reading itself is a visual endeavor!

The data showed us that this was by far the most common misconception about MI theory. Most often, these papers seemed to use the terms interchangeably, such as one article that included the statement, “Howard Gardner highlighted the different learning styles of students with his theory of Multiple Intelligences back in the 1980s” or another that said, “According to psychology and Research Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard University, Howard Gardner, there are seven identifiable learning styles.”

Error #2: Linking intelligence directly to career success or domain selection (25%)

While it’s fair to say that possessing strength in certain intelligences may mean you are well-suited for certain kinds of work, claims that an individual’s MI profile determines how successful they will be professionally or which jobs they can have are extrapolations or oversimplifications, and are not supported by MI theory.

This error often appeared in well-intentioned articles about choosing a career path, a matter that can be overwhelming and stressful. The problematic nature of these claims is in their reductive implications. For example, one article described, “Potential career choices for people with linguistic intelligence include lawyer, author, journalist, speaker, and politician.” Not only does this make it seem as though intelligence refers to a mutually exclusive type, rather than a component of the mind that has a certain amount of strength; it also both unfairly limits the number of career options a person has and exaggerates the predictive nature of MI on career success. Moreover, it is possible to succeed in some of these careers without strong linguistic intelligence, and strength in an intelligence by no means narrows or dictates one’s career options.

Error #3: Misunderstanding what it means to have strength in a certain intelligence (20%)

These types of misrepresentations seemed based on incomplete or false understandings of MI theory, which then led to fragmentary or deficient descriptions. For example, one paper included the statement, “Illustrious American psychologist Howard Gardner proposes that a child is blessed with at least eight skills and he keeps divulging and making use of it in different phases of his life,” while another said that MI theory describes, “a model composed of eight requirements of cleverness.” In both of these examples, the writers’ understanding of MI may initially seem close to the mark, but the implications are misleading. Children do not all have strength across the intellectual landscape, nor are intellectual strengths or weaknesses linked to life stages.

Error #4: Misattribution; mentions a type of intelligence that does not exist in the theory (8%)

These errors likely arise when there is confusion between MI theory and another theory. For example, one article stated, “…people have learned the habit, not just the skill of what Harvard professor Dr. Howard Gardner called ‘listening intelligence,’ one of the multiple intelligences he focuses on.” In fact, this is not one of the eight intelligences the theory proposes. Another article claimed that MI theory contains twelve different types of intelligence, which is inaccurate.

Error #5: Claims that there is an MI-assessment associated with the theory (5%)

Gardner has not developed an MI test, and does not place a great deal of weight on self-assessment (because there is no reason to assume that people understand their own minds accurately). To be sure, some scholars have developed their own way of measuring multiple intelligences (the best-known instrument is the MIDAS test, developed by Branton Shearer), but  there is no official assessment associated with the theory. In one article, the author recommends readers “use Howard Gardner’s ‘Multiple Intelligence Assessment’ to help each individual be successful academically.” Not only does Gardner neither have nor endorse any test: it’s a far stretch to claim that any brief instrument can predict success or failure in academic work.

Other errors (5%)

A few articles did not fall into the above categories but were still in error. One claimed that Gardner has denounced the legitimacy of multiple intelligences, which he most emphatically has not! Several described how fingerprints can be used to determine information about a person’s intelligences -- a claim not supported by any legitimate research (you can find more information about this particular misconception under “Malpractices.”) This misconception — or other claims that MI is tied to any identifiable physical trait — is particularly dangerous, as it creates the opportunity for individual bad actors or companies to exploit those who may not know better, persuading them to spend money on fingerprint analysis or other bogus testing.

In conclusion…

My research led me to a clearer understanding of common misconceptions in journalism (or elsewhere on the internet) around Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences. It’s not possible to say with certainty why these misunderstandings and misrepresentations come up. However, it seems likely that accuracy issues often arise not from malicious intent, but rather from rush jobs. When proper research is not done, even theories that would otherwise be fairly easy to present, like MI, can be misconstrued as inaccurate assumptions are made.

While the data collected is about one specific theory, the insights also speak to a troublesome wider issue: misinformation, and the ease with which it can be found and spread on the internet. Especially in this age of rapid technological development, AI instruments like ChatGPT may use and replicate misinformation, making our ability to achieve accurate understandings even more difficult.  

It’s worth noting that our findings by no means detract from how encouraging it is to see sustained discourse about the theory online. Scholarly and scientific research should be widely available and accessible; it is to the great advantage of all that the conversations around MI and other theories continue to expand and change, to find new venues and voices with time. However, it is key that, in moving discussions like this forward, we are scrupulous in calling attention to unwarranted claims and seeking to clear and correct the landscape of misinformation.

I would like to thank Shinri Furuzawa and Howard Gardner for their very thoughtful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this piece.

Multiple Intelligences at 40, Howard Gardner at 80

By one of those odd numerical coincidences, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences was published 40 years ago; and I, the author of the book and the creator of “MI theory,” turned 80 on July 11, 2023.

I’ve written a great deal about “MI theory”—including several books, as well as a personal memoir in which “MI theory” occupies the middle of that book (Part II of three parts). I’ll try not to repeat or paraphrase what I’ve already said and/or written many times in many places.

Yet, at a time when I’ve already surpassed the years of life allotted to me in the Bible, and while I am still in reasonable cognitive and physical shape, it seems appropriate to set down a few thoughts.

1. The Good and the Bad

On the one hand, “MI theory” (and practices) have received far more attention than I could ever have anticipated. Much done in the name of “MI” seems benevolent and perhaps helpful to various constituencies. I am especially touched—indeed thrilled—at the number of schools launched or featuring “MI ideas;” the number of educational organizations that describe and discuss multiple talents or intelligences; and the many people—not only educators but parents, children, relatives, scholars from different disciplines—who say that they have been inspired by “MI work” undertaken by my colleagues and me.

On the other hand, not all individuals and groups expressing views about “MI” seem to have read, absorbed, or reflected on the original ideas and the ways in which they were stated. Some of these applications and implications are fine or at least neutral, but others have been misguided and some injurious. I have spoken out when I could, but I quickly learned the following lesson: once an idea has become a “meme”, one cannot attempt to control its fate. Recently, my colleague Annie Stachura has documented some of these misunderstandings or misapplications, soon to be published here.

2. A Middle Course

I am basically a scholar and a writer with a penchant for taking on new questions and puzzles. Left to my own devices, by the middle 1980s, I probably would have simply closed the chapter called “MI”—just as I had finished projects from earlier years that probed structuralism, artistic development, and the breakdown of cognitive capacities under various conditions of brain damage.

But because of the enormous interest generated, it would have been wrong simply to abandon “MI”—and so I have tried to respond when appropriate and to be helpful when possible—without letting “MI” dominate my “in” or my “out” box. Similarly, when I get correspondence (and 80% of my non-collegial inbox continues to be about “MI”), I try to respond helpfully; and when I get a worthwhile invitation, I typically pass it on to appropriate colleagues.

3. Avoiding Monetization

At least in theory, I could have trademarked or claimed copyright on tests and games based on “MI.” As my children have occasionally quipped “Then we’d be very rich!” I was never tempted to do so and am glad that I never succumbed.

Had I done so, I would then have had to become a policeman and probably take legal actions against those who impinged on my “property.” Instead, I have encouraged many individuals to use my ideas but cautioned them not to state or imply any endorsement from me of their particular approaches or products. And a few times, I have had to ask lawyers to send a “cease and desist” letter.

4. On to the Actual Claims

“MI theory” is based on research that is now a half century old. Suppose a younger version of myself were to embark today on the study of “the nature of human potential in the cognitive realm” – the charge given to those of us on the Van Leer Foundation “Study of Human Potential.” I would have had to examine different sources of knowledge and synthesize them in appropriate ways.

One question that would immediately pop up is whether in the original work I had missed important intelligences. What of a cooking intelligence, a humor intelligence, a technological intelligence—just to mention three commonly proposed intelligences? During a sabbatical year in 1994-5 when I was able to conduct necessary research, I added naturalist intelligence to my list—raising the number of data-based intelligences to eight. But life is short; and I did not have additional years to devote to any new candidate. And so, since 1995, I only have speculated about the possibility of an existential intelligence (the intelligence of big questions) and a pedagogical intelligence (the intelligence that allows us to teach individuals of different ages, knowledge bases, and motivations). While invoking these concepts, and allowing others to invoke them, I have also stressed that there is not the same carefully culled evidence for these that led to the positing of the initial seven, and then, eight intelligences.

5. A New Non-human Intelligence and New Resources

When Frames of Mind was written, scientists had certainly studied neuroscience and genetics. And I drew on these disciplines. But in the early 1980s, only writers of science fiction could have anticipated how much we now know about the human genome, and as well as our knowledge of the development of, and the connections within, the human nervous system. And to this, one must now add new, non-human form of intelligence—notably artificial intelligence (AI) which makes possible things like the Large Language Learning Systems (such as ChatGPT). Needless to say, any offspring of Frames of Mind would have to deal with these and other new arrivals on the scientific, technological, and epistemological landscapes.

Would new concepts and new data change the basic arguments introduced in Frames of Mind?

In one way, of course they would. Any work of synthesis— (and I now understand synthesizing far better than I did in 1980)—needs to take into account the current state of knowledge, as well as possible new information and news sources. The literary offspring of Frames of Mind would be very different in 2025. But it is quite possible that the basic argument—that there exists a small number of relatively independent human intellectual capacities—might still remain.

6. The New Frontier: Synthesizing

When, some years ago, I began to write my memoir, I thought I would be focusing on “MI”—after all, that’s what I am known for, that’s the principal reason why my memoir might be of interest.

But the more I reflected on my own life, and my own mind, the more I realized that “MI” is not an adequate description of how my own mind works. In fact, I am a fairly conventional scholar—with a reasonable amount of linguistic and logical mathematical intelligence. My own scholarly approach draws as well as on musical and naturalist intelligences, but those are bonuses, not core, to the enterprise.

If my mind—and my approach—to scholarship is distinctive, it’s because I like to examine lots of disparate information from diverse sources and put all of this information together in ways that make sense to me, and, with any luck, to others.

And so, now and for the foreseeable future, I (and if I am fortunate, a few other colleagues) will be trying to understand that frame of mind—The Synthesizing Mind—which may well actually in itself entail several of the originally posited frames of mind.

Closing Thought

I am extremely grateful to all my collaborators, colleagues, and friends who have supported me over the past decades, as I have sought to preserve what may be of value in the “MI world;” to correct errors of fact and ill-advised judgments and recommendations; and to move on to other projects, each with their own promises and their own enigmas.

I’d like to thank Ellen Winner and Shinri Furuzawa for their comments on an earlier draft.

Mixed Martial Arts as Interdisciplinary Street Fighting?

Introduction by Howard Gardner

For the last few years, I have been blogging regularly—and most of my blogs have fallen into one of two categories:  1) the ways in which humans synthesize information (link to series here) and 2) updates on the theory of multiple intelligences (MI theory), link here.

Thanks to the extraordinary work by my colleague Anthea Roberts,  I now have the opportunity to tie together these  strands of my work. As described in Anthea’s recent contribution (link here) to my blog on synthesizing, over the last two years, she and I have begun to explore our complementary perspectives on this hitherto underappreciated cognitive capacity. Most of my work has entailed an effort to describe the cognitive processes involved in synthesizing and/or to analyze examples of synthesizing in different spheres and sectors. In complementary fashion, Anthea conceptualizes synthesizing as akin to the multiplicity of perspectives that the synthesizer brings to an assignment, and she invokes the vivid metaphor of a dragonfly’s eyes. Drawing on the work of psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, Anthea proposes that broadband synthesizing can be instructively contrasted with the kind of systematic, but narrow thinking that characterizes individuals on the autism spectrum.

Now, applying an unexpected and surprisingly apt lens, Anthea introduces the kind of synthesizing that is carried out by her brother, Denis Roberts. At one time an expert in traditional martial arts, Denis has devoted years of study and practice to the creation of a pluralistic variety of martial arts—one that draws on capacities and processes that were once restricted to only a single form of bodily expression.

Anthea’s blog speaks for itself, vividly! But perhaps unexpectedly, it also draws in illuminating fashion on the cognitive processes that characterize what I’ve termed “bodily-kinesthetic intelligence”—one of the eight cognitive capacities that comprise my theory of multiple intelligences. And so, in equal measure, her essay constitutes a contribution to my second series of blogs—the resource associated with MI theory.

By Anthea Roberts*

© Copyright 2023 Anthea Roberts

Although it might come as a surprise to some given my general nerdy pedigree, my brother (Denis Roberts) is a no rules cage fighter. (For those with a strong stomach, you can see his first fight here.) Despite superficial differences, however, Denis and I have a lot in common. We both developed an interest in dispute resolution, though we invested time in perfecting very different techniques. He trained as a fighter, I went to law school. We both have a desire to traverse boundaries and break free from disciplinary constraints, though the restrictions we react against are different. He ended up fighting across disciplines, I joined an interdisciplinary school. To use a characterization appropriate for this posting, we are both synthesizers or dragonfly thinkers by nature, but these tendencies manifest in different ways.

In the United States, “no rules fighting” goes under the name Mixed Martial Arts (MMA); it is often done through competitions like the Ultimate Fighting Contest (UFC). As opposed to drawing on the techniques of one fighting discipline, and being bound by the rules of that discipline, MMA permits fighters to draw on techniques from any fighting style to beat their opponents. No rules fighting is a bit of a misnomer, it turns out. MMA provides a few basic ground rules – e.g., no strikes to the back of the head or spine and no eye gouging – but, other than that, fighters simply bring whatever skills they have to the fight to try to gain the upper hand. MMA is probably the closest one can get in a formal competition to a street fight though, importantly, no weapons are allowed.

As apparently characterizes many MMA fighters, my brother has done training in numerous fight disciplines. He is internationally competitive in some (demonstrating excellence) and capable in others (demonstrating sufficiency). When Denis began his training in the early 2000s, he was doing kickboxing with a kickboxing coach, jujitsu with a jujitsu coach, wrestling with a wrestling coach, and boxing with a boxing coach, etc. He was struck by this fact: in each discipline, the coaches and participants revered particular approaches but seemed ignorant about others. They often had very little knowledge of other fighting disciplines and typically looked down on other approaches as inferior—at least according to key measures on which their discipline excelled. Each discipline had its own strengths, but was also beset by blind spots and biases, he thought.

Although my brother enjoyed training in each discipline, his natural tendency was always to try to take it up a level. He instinctively wanted to transcend disciplinary boundaries, seeing himself as a fighter, not as a kickboxer, jujitsu specialist, wrestler, or boxer. He was struck by how a given discipline might teach you one thing, such as punching, while leaving you vulnerable to another, such as having your legs taken out from under you. He was also drawn to thinking of ways to creatively integrate insights from different disciplines. What if you combined this move from kickboxing with that move from wrestling? What if you started a move with a jujitsu technique and then moved seamlessly into a boxing move?

In many ways, my brother’s journey has paralleled the journey of MMA fighting. MMA was introduced in North America and Japan in the 1990s as a way of allowing different fighting disciplines to face off against each other. Before that, there had always been a question about which fighting discipline was the best and which would win out in a street fight. But this sort of conjecture remained just that – conjecture – because there was no way of putting the issue to the test. Indeed, when fighters from different disciplines came to meet each other in the early UFC cages, many hallowed theories about which disciplines and techniques were the most effective proved to be wrong, while other little known approaches proved highly effective.

At first, the Brazilian jujitsu artists dominated the UFC due to the power of their little known submission holds (excellence). Then the wrestlers learned enough jujitsu to avoid these submission holds (sufficiency) so that they could remain in the game long enough to take full advantage of their wrestling takedowns; the wrestlers could then use their size, strength and athleticism to take the fight to the ground and pound their opponent from on top (excellence). In time, kickboxers came to learn enough about jujitsu and wrestling to be able to defend against takedowns and submissions (sufficiency); accordingly, they could keep the fight in their preferred standing position for longer from where they had an advantage (excellence). People debated which discipline was the best fighting discipline, with the mantle moving from jujitsu to wrestling to kickboxing in waves (Mastering Jujitsu, 41-46).

But then something interesting happened.

Instead of MMA becoming a place where people from different disciplines came to fight each other to see which discipline was best, the best MMA fighters started to do cross-training to develop and integrate skills and techniques from a range of different disciplines. The question was no longer which disciplines was the best. It was now which martial artists who employed which particular combination of skills and talents was best. MMA transcended the individual fighting discipline from which it arose and became a testing ground for integrative approaches that traversed disciplinary boundaries. It became a place where we started to see synthesis occurring in real time … and sometimes with real consequences. 

My brother’s favorite coach is John Danaher and, after watching, listening to and reading many of Danaher’s words, I can see why. Famous in the jujitsu and MMA world, Danaher left his PhD in Philosophy at Columbia University to train jujitsu fighters and some of the early MMA champions, including Georges St-Pierre. Coming from a strong academic family, Danaher has a piercing intellect and a gift for teaching, and has done a lot to transform jujitsu training and the sport of MMA. In a profile published in Vice, John Serra, a former UFC welterweight said: “I would 100 percent call John Danaher the Einstein of Brazilian jiu-jitsu.” A New Yorker profile on Danaher described him as MMA’s equivalent of Hannibal Lecter: “scary smart, superbly calculated and logical.”

John Danaher: image from Ju Jitsu Times

John Danaher: image from Ju Jitsu Times

With this unusual combination of brains and brawn, Danaher was quick to realize that something special and different was happening in MMA. He has compared the early days of the UFC to the discovery of the New World in terms of its impact on Brazilian jiu-jitsu and MMA. Before the UFC, he explained, “[t]here was no open competition, no place to test theories—it was just people’s opinions floating around.” But the UFC gave a “rock solid mechanism to test the various theories of the martial arts. To test the mettle of the various athletes, so we could form solid conclusions about what could work and what doesn’t work.” And, importantly, what worked were integrative approaches. Victory did not belong to a particular style of fighting; it belonged to the athletes who could best exhibit the art of synthesis.

As Danaher recalled in a podcast:

“During the early years of UFC there were debates about which martial art was king, with different martial arts coming to the fore at different times, but: all that was leading towards this idea that the real truth wasn’t that any one martial art was king, but rather that the skills of all the martial arts synthesized would be king. And that there would be a day in the future where we really could stop talking about style versus style and started talking about athlete versus athlete. And I remember looking at this VHS of George St. Pierre and saying, that’s exactly what this kid is, this kid’s the future. Like he’s not a jujitsu player, he’s not a wrestler, he’s not a kickboxer. He’s the average of those three things. And I remember just [thinking] this kid’s doing something really, really interesting. He’s the face of a new kind of martial art, like mixed martial arts is different from its components. And something revolutionary is happening here.”

As Danaher explained in a podcast with Joe Rogan, a UFC commentator,

“99% of people who look at mixed martial arts see mixed martial arts as an eclectic sport, in other words it’s a conglomeration of different martial arts kind of banded together and then you got mixed martial arts.”

But to Danaher the key wasn’t multi-disciplinarity, it was interdisciplinarity where different skills were integrated into new skill sets that transcended the martial arts that traditionally made up MMA. What turned Georges St-Pierre into a world champion wasn’t that he was the best in any individual discipline, Rather, he was able to seamlessly integrate and synthesize them. Inspired by his approach, Danaher proposed a schema of four distinct skills (shoot boxing, clinch boxing, fence boxing, and grapple boxing) where the whole is more than the sum of its parts: each

“skill area transcends the various martial arts that make it up and create something bigger and different from the core components that originally built it.”

I am struck by my brother’s story and Danaher’s description. It feels eerily like my interests in interdisciplinary research, dragonfly thinking and the synthesizing mind. Like my brother in his early days of fight training, I spent my early days at university observing different disciplines that seemed to have their own rules, hierarchies and measurements of skill and achievement. I enjoyed training in different disciplines (originally law, philosophy and mathematics), before eventually picking international law as my focus.  After a while, however, I felt constrained by that field and approach and became more interdisciplinary, drawing on economics, sociology, political science and psychology to think about global and governance issues more generally. I was drawn to thinking about problems in a broad and integrative way, and to developing schemas or frames through which to understand complex and contested fields.

When I think about the early days of UFC, I sometimes have the following thought: what would have happened if you had put economists, epidemiologists, sociologists and political scientists into a ring at the start of a complex problem like COVID-19 and told them to “fight it out”? You could have the top economists and epidemiologists in the world, I think, but they’d soon have found that the best answers lay in integrating insights from across different disciplines rather than in one discipline consistently offering what they deemed to be the knockout blow. That is because each of the disciplines offers important insights, but also tends to be subject to its own blind spots and biases. To be sure, it is important to have world leaders in each discipline and we learn a lot from their deep, if narrow, expertise. But something highly original as well as useful can come from integrating and synthesizing insights from across disciplines to deal with complex real world problems.

In MMA, the different fighting disciplines realized that they had something to learn from each other and, in the process, created something new that transcended the original approaches. As an interdisciplinary researcher interested in synthesis and integrative approaches, I suspect I have something to learn from MMA. As universities try to make sense of what interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary research means, and how it differs from and goes beyond multidisciplinarity, MMA provides a useful case study in another field for thinking through these issues. And as we are try to engage in complex real world problems that resemble interdisciplinary street fights, I try to remember that the trick is not to be world class in every aspect of that problem, but to find the best ways to combine excellence in some areas and sufficiency in others to find creative combinations and connections while avoiding blind spots and biases. It seems to me that that is an approach that is worth fighting for in today’s academy.

For previous discussions on these ideas and/or for comments on earlier drafts, I am much indebted to Christian Barry, Jarrett Blaustein, Miranda Forsyth, Howard Gardner, Ryan Gillett, Denis Roberts, Meredith Rossner, Jensen Sass, and Jon Schwartz.

Bibliography

Armstrong, Shiro. “Denis at XFC 6.” Vimeo. May 9, 2010. https://vimeo.com/11591808

BJJ Hacks. “John Danaher: High Performance Jiu-Jitsu | BJJ Hacks in NYC.” YouTube. June 3, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpLKrhwGavU

Frank, Sam. “The Jujitsu Master Turning an Ancient Art into a Modern Science.” The New Yorker. July 10, 2017. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-jujitsu-master-turning-an-ancient-art-into-a-modern-science.

Gracie, Renzo, and John Danaher. Mastering Jujitsu. Human Kinetics, 2003.

London Real. “John Danaher - The Philosophy Of Martial Arts: The Man Who Inspired Me To Learn Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.” May 31, 2022. https://londonreal.tv/john-danaher-the-philosophy-of-martial-arts-the-man-who-inspired-me-to-learn-brazilian-jiu-jitsu/

Stanley, Ben, and Kristopher McDuff. “The Life and Influence of Real-Life Martial Arts Monk, Kiwi John Danaher.” Vice. October 22, 2018. https://www.vice.com/en/article/evwwpe/the-life-and-influence-of-real-life-martial-arts-monk-kiwi-john-danaher.

The Joe Rogan Experience. “JRE MMA Show #11 with John Danaher.” OGJRE. January 15, 2018. https://ogjre.com/episode/jre-mma-show-11-with-john-danaher

*Professor at the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) and Director of the Centre for International Governance and Justice, Australian National University. Email: Anthea.Roberts@anu.edu.au.